The much-beloved statue will depart her perch opposite the iconic Charging Bull to stare down some new scenery: The New York Stock Exchange, the Daily News has learned.

Advertisement

City Hall and the financial services firm that commissioned Fearless Girl, State Street Global Advisors, will announce the move Thursday.

"Our goal is to promote the power of having women in leadership, and placing her right next to the New York Stock Exchange is really the perfect metaphor," Cyrus Taraporevala, president and CEO of State Street Global Advisors, told The News.

The much-heralded debut of “Fearless Girl” sparked contentious debate and spurred politicians, including Mayor de Blasio, to stop by for a photo-op. (James Keivom/New York Daily News)

The move comes as the city and the company sought a more permanent home for the popular statue — and one with fewer safety issues than her current spot in a Bowling Green median, which gets overrun with onlookers who often stand in the busy street.

Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen said the city wanted a more pedestrian-friendly location that was downtown and retained the symbolic power of the original.

"What could be more important than the sort of epicenter of corporate power?" Glen asked. "And clearly, the Fearless Girl was built to talk about that."

Related Gallery

Wall Street's 'Fearless Girl' statue captivates New Yorkers

The statue first popped up just over a year ago, on International Women's Day. The firm placed it there, they said, to encourage more women on corporate boards — and the plucky girl, with her hands defiantly on her hips, immediately struck a chord with New Yorkers and visitors. What was supposed to be a short-lived installation was extended for more than a year.

"It was, to be honest, really overwhelming — but overwhelming in an inspiring way," Lynn Blake, an executive vice president at State Street, said. "The placement was really for a very specific reason and a call to action, to holding stocks in our portfolios to increasing gender diversity — because of all the research that's been done by countless organizations that shows greater gender diversity leads to better results."

Glen, herself a veteran of Goldman Sachs, said the statue became a "much, much more serious symbol of trying to deal with a broken status quo for women" — especially those in the corporate world. She said women need concrete action — noting that New York is home to 55 Fortune 500 companies, and only one with a female CEO — but that symbols are important, too.

The now-iconic statue will take up residence beside the ever-iconic New York Stock Exchange building. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)

"I just think it's really important, given this time in history, that we do everything we can to raise awareness around these very serious issues confronting the lack of economic and political and financial power for women," Glen said.

And State Street says they've seen concrete results from the campaign. When it began, the firm reached out to more than 700 companies in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia that had no women on their boards. But 152 have since added a woman, Taraporevala said, and another 34 have pledged to do so.

But the statue was not without controversy. The bull's sculptor, Arturo Di Modica, decried its placement, and some bashed it as "corporate feminism." Glen said that was "noise" compared to the statue's work in reminding people that women don't earn equal pay, or have enough spots on boards or in legislatures.

Arturo Di Modica's ‘Charging Bull’ will once again stand alone in the Financial District plaza. (Nicole Hensley/New York Daily News)

State Street, meanwhile, didn't mind the criticism.

"If it even gets some people thinking about stuff, and they decide they don't like it, we're still getting people to think about the issue," Taraporevala said.

State Street was also criticized for its own hiring — the company reached a $5 million settlement over gender pay discrimination in response to an audit brought by the federal government. Blake said the company didn't agree with the government's methodology or findings, but settled to avoid litigation. Taraporevala noted a third of the company's board members are women.

Advertisement

The statue was such a hit that it created a logisitical headache for the Financial District, with crowds of tourists often spilling out into the street and blocking traffic. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

Due to safety concerns about traffic — and potential terror attacks using cars — the city said it was also exploring moving the Charging Bull itself.

But while Fearless Girl will move by year's end, there are no immediate plans to move the bull — the city said Wednesday it was "exploring" putting it somewhere else downtown.

And on Thursday, a day after telling The News that Fearless Girl would move to face down the Stock Exchange, City Hall insisted the Girl and the Bull could eventually be reunited, with the city considering the plaza outside the exchange as one of his potential new homes.

The city could not provide a timeline for even deciding whether it would move Charging Bull, let alone for actually moving it. Nor could it say whether the Bull would be placed in between Fearless Girl and the Exchange she will face, if it's even moved to the plaza at all.

So for the immediate future, Fearless Girl will be without the animal she was envisioned to stare down. Taraporevala said he wasn't worried that the art would suffer for that.